Evidence emerges of Steam loyalty discount scheme

[spacein_vader]

what? Fairtrade coffee farmers are not paid huge bribes to only sell their coffee through one single outlet that requires you to hand over your personal details to a company with a horrible security record and serious questions over their ownship.

Whilst we (pretty much) all agree that Steam's monopoly isn't good either, the way Epic have gone about things is totally indefensible.

It's defensible to their owners as they build market share. Ultimately that's all that matters.

[ByteMyAscii]

Oh well that'll be alright, then. The sooner Epic die, the better.

Not at all, as i've said many times - the competition is needed, but just not by introducing console style timed and permanent exclusives into a previously open platform like a PC. evenmoreso not by bribing the publishers (not developers I must add....this isn't their fault!). It's still amazing the authorities have not stepped into this given how bad it is for the consumer, but the they are slow to act when it comes to tech so who knows.

Here's the thing though - if Epic stopped all the exclusivity rubbish, they wouldn't be able to compete with Steam. Why? Their launcher and store is rubbish, feature poor, and the company has a terrible record on security (much worse than steam).

Epic could have invested all that bribery money into their platform and product and given valve something to *really* worry about. They took the lazy approach though which is fine [for them] short term, but disastrous for the PC gaming community as a whole in the long run if it keeps going.

I'd much rather support platforms like GOG which are much more open and don't get involved in the "bad" side - look how fast they are growing and the support they get by well, not screwing over the PC gaming community...

And yet other stores which aren't Epic aren't able to compete either.
Steam is just so entrenched that if it is an option, it will almost certainly be the default and nothing else is worth considering when on equal or similar terms for pricing.
The exclusives are necessery, and why some other stores have any sales at all.
The consumers are anti-consumer more than Epic.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Urgh links to pro gamer gate guardian...Monopolies are bad Epic yeah wish we could have a better challenger but steam sat on there asses for along time. Sales were getting worse no Half life 3 etc all of a sudden they seem to be shifting gears.

The Epic CEO approached the Guardian to write the attack piece on MS,so it tells you his intent. I linked to the Guardian to show the change in his viewpoints,and how hilarious it was,as the Guardian probably realised it was played by him.

This was not a Guardian link but an industry website:

Epic Boss Says Developers Will Decide Who Wins The Game Store Wars, Not Consumers

Epic just went and wrote puff pieces in the Guardian attacking MS,and essentially doing what they said was a bad thing!

And yet other stores which aren't Epic aren't able to compete either.
Steam is just so entrenched that if it is an option, it will almost certainly be the default and nothing else is worth considering when on equal or similar terms for pricing.
The exclusives are necessery, and why some other stores have any sales at all.
The consumers are anti-consumer more than Epic.

His company also bribed crowd funded games,where people had been promised keys for other stores. Some of these people were wanting DRM free keys from GOG or Linux capable installs. In fact a lot of games which would normally work under Linux now won't have that option for a while. For an enthusiast forum,people don't seem to consider EGS has no Linux branch.

It also is not in China,so ended up meaning lots of Chinese gamers were also excluded,so they pirated games even more. There is also something else,which was not so good. Steam and other stores do extensive regional pricing,but EGS isn't as good. So what happened is a number of these games ended up being much more expensive in lower income countries.

If it was regional exclusivity it wouldn't be as bad.

Also,the Valve profit share was industry standard,ie,almost all stores including consoles had those. That includes independents. Epic has a ton of investment funding from companies such as Tencent,so can afford to throw money at companies. The problem is that it means only the bigger companies can compete now. That includes Steam.

GOG is in serious trouble too,as are all the smaller independent games storefronts. The problem is Steam has enough money to take on Epic so that is their problem,but GOG and others have to cut their margins to compete,and they have high overheads. Exactly the same as the highstreet - smaller shops generally don't survive heavyweights fighting each other. They can't afford to do big loss leaders.

It means GOG has started to fire people,and cut down on regional pricing. The irony is the Epic CEO a few years ago accused MS, when they opened their own games store, of trying to destroy the competition though a monopoly. GOG was one of the companies he was defending. Steam too!

Epic Boss Says Developers Will Decide Who Wins The Game Store Wars, Not Consumers

So he first attacks MS,who were potentially a company which could take on Steam and give us more choice,then he says customers deserves no choice of stores,as he makes the decision. Like I said people who believe what he says,should actually look at how he contradicts himself all the time. Also some of you should watch Jim Sterling's video on Valve and EGS. He does not like Steam either, primarily as they sat on their arse without properly curating their own store,etc but he pointed out a lot of the problems with Epic too and what their end goal is.

Honestly I still dislike always on DRM like Valve,etc do especially if you are into modding games,etc and games can get frequently pulled from online storefronts. It's a shame people had an alternative like GOG,and never bothered with it.

[Ttaskmaster]

what? Fairtrade coffee farmers are not paid huge bribes to only sell their coffee through one single outlet that requires you to hand over your personal details to a company with a horrible security record and serious questions over their ownship.

Neither are the developers of Epic's catalogue. They're given quite clear guaranteed payments as incentives to sell on Epic.

As for security - Personal details are a requirement of just about every company selling you a service, nowadays.
I've had my Steam and Origin accounts attacked, on more than one occasion. No-one has touched my Epic one. I haven't heard of anyone's account actually being breached though, unless they have already been breached elsewhere and did something stupid like using one very obvious password for everything.... But then, some people have actually been complaining that Epic are insisting on 2FA, so with individuals like that on the internet complaining about a company's security is a bit moot.

As to the ownership (presumably you mean Tencent and the Chinese concern?), you should be more concerned about how much of our infrastructure and pension funding is owned by China. Just about everyone has to pay utility bills, and just about everyone has a pension. China has investments in many of those companies, as well as being the investor of other shareholding companies, all with loads of data they can potentially access.... though to date there's not been anything to suggest they're actually doing that, just as there's been no evidence to even suggest it's happening with Epic.

Whilst we (pretty much) all agree that Steam's monopoly isn't good either, the way Epic have gone about things is totally indefensible.

It's starting to work, though... No-one else has managed that yet. Best they could do was take their biggest titles and rely on them to start their own naff launcher.

[spacein_vader]

As if they've read this thread and decided "hey, it's working so lets up the ante" from 4pm today the next free game is GTA 5.

[Gentle Viking]

If only these "shops" was in charge of anti cheat, and a cheat erased the persons whole library of games, i would consider this.
Just as if any political party was pro reinstating the death penalty here again, those guys would get my vote in a heartbeat, unless their other stuff was all woke BS.